The FortySecond Week
by Arixa23
Summary: Horton sat on that egg for fifty-one weeks before Mayzie finally paid him a visit. What did he do for all that time? For that matter, what did everyone else do for all that time?
1. And this one actually had an Opinion

_And this one actually had an Opinion (Jojo)_

Jojo doesn't really talk much to any of the other cadets, mostly because it's become apparent a long time ago that none of them really have anything much to say. "Butter-side-down" and "Schmitz, Schmitz, Schmitz" and "I do not like them, Sam-I-Am" is the most coherent any of them ever gets. And talking is discouraged, anyway, so where and when would you do it? Every day the cadets train and train and train and every night the cadets fall into their narrow beds exhausted, and Jojo barely has time to dash off a letter home every once in a while. Every morning and afternoon and every evening they eat gruvulous glop from a bowl, which makes Jojo wonder why they're fighting a war over a method of eating a foodstuff which _none of them ever get to eat anyway. _Except on demonstration days, that is, when they gather to eat their butter-side-up bread in a very long, very loud ceremony. Everythinginvolving General Genghis Khan Schmitz is loud. _Everything._

Jojo has never been loud. Jojo is not loud now, in the face of all this war and confusion. Jojo has been at the military academy for almost a year now, and wants nothing, nothing more in the _world_ than to go back to Whoville and to a real family and real school, where, at least, even if they don't teach you real things, they don't try and _un-_teach you things, and to being a child again instead of some sad, hollow imitation of an adult. Jojo knows how to march in formation now, how to use the pathetic little wooden sword, how to climb ropes and dig ditches and shout battle cries at the Butter-Side-Downers, but Jojo has not yet learned _why_ any of these things are or should ever be things worth learning, and suspects uncomfortably that there is, in fact, no reason whatsoever.

General Schmitz won't tell the cadets anything about what is happening to Who, whether Horton has found them yet or not. The General insists that such things don't matter or possibly don't even exist, that war is the only important thing in life. It's gotten very cold recently, though it should be spring in the field of clovers, and there's no explanation for that other than: What with all of the other things that have happened to them, why _shouldn't_ sudden rapid climate change be one of them? Jojo _knows_ that Horton hasn't found them and probably never will, and Jojo knows that every other cadet in the academy knows the same thing, and Jojo cannot understand why none of them seem to care. Jojo cannot understand why the other cadets stare straight ahead with such blank eyes and never seem to notice anything, how not only the imagination but the _life_ has been drained out of them, and not understanding scares the Thinker.

Oh, after weeks of no dinner for speaking up in rank, Jojo has learned, all right, that one should never open one's mouth unless called upon to do so. The military teaches one how to fake conformity better than anything. But every day is a battle to keep faking from turning into reality, and Jojo is scared, more scared of this than of anything else (except for possibly the inevitable _real_ war), that one day the battle will either be lost or explode into something which can't be hidden anymore.


	2. I galloped through the snow at 11 below

_I galloped through the snow in eleven below (Gertrude)_

It is eleven and a quarter degrees below zero and Miss Gertrude McFuzz is cold and wet and tired and hungry and coming down with the flu and has absolutely _no_ idea where she is.

She crash-landed here about a week ago when, flying through the fog straight out of the biggest theoretically-a-cranberry-bog you could ever imagine, she was attacked by a gang of angry geese. And since then, she's been slogging non-stop through knee-high snow, in a featureless landscape with only the occasional tip of an overwhelmed tree poking out through the whiteness to reassure her that she isn't going around in very small circles. She suspects she's somewhere in Canada, but it could be Siberia for all she knows about geography. The single thing she carries is Horton's clover, tucked in her bodice to keep it from freezing; if the speck really does have people living on it, as he insisted so adamantly it did, the last thing she wants to do is deliver them to him freeze-dried. And... and besides, at this point it's the closest thing she has to remember him by. She keeps it right next to her heart.

That clover, the constant, immediate reminder of Horton, is the one thing keeping her going. If it wasn't for the memory of him, and his own caring and generosity and self-sacrifice, she would have laid down in the snow and given up days ago. She doesn't even know for sure that he's alive, but she tells herself there's certainly a good chance, since she is almost sure she remembers the hunters saying in that one horrible and confused moment that he'd be worth much more to them as a living curiosity than as a dead source of ivory. What a world this is, Gertrude reflects, that a person performing an act of kindness for another person is a saleable curiosity. She thinks annoyedly, as she kicks snow out of her path in a random fit of pique, that it's a good thing nobody else is around to see _her,_ or she might very well end up as a curiosity herself. 'Come See the World-Traversing, One-Feather-Tailed Bird in Search of an Elephant!" she mutters aloud to herself, kicking through the snow as though she has a personal grudge against it. At this point, she _does._

Well, at least it's character-building, she tells herself over and over again. It's character-building that my limbs are all frozen so numb that I can't even feel the blisters my feet have become. By the time I find Horton, which I _will_ if it takes me the rest of my life, I'm going to have so much character that it won't all be able to fit in the same room as me. I'm going to have so much character that nobody will ever notice what my tail does or doesn't look like. I'll rescue Horton all by myself, and then he'll notice me even if I have to hold him down and bang his head against a wall until he does. This time I will _not_ back down.


	3. Who knew so much work was required

_Who knew so much work was required (Mayzie and José)_

"Joséeeee," Mayzie LaBird calls from her lounge chair, for something the seventh time that afternoon, "bring me a cocktail and then please, please, please, let's find something to doooo?"

José, who has until then been on the other side of the pool attempting relatively successfully to look busy while in fact doing nothing whatsoever, slinks off to the poolside bar to bring the sunglasses-sporting bird her favorite cocktail. The bartender already knows the order, barely even grunting "The usual?" before beginning to mix. They're not even in a routine here, the poolboy reflects. They're in a very, very deep rut.

"Ah, Mayzie?" José says tentatively, returning and handing her the cocktail. "I know you like it here, yes?"

"Ahh..." Mayzie takes a sip of her cocktail. "Hell yeah. I mean, it sure beats sittin' on an egg somewhere out in the jungle."

"Oh, yes. Of course." José sighs."I am just beginning to wonder, señora, if maybe now you would like to not sit on an egg somewhere else? I mean, if you would like to go somewhere else and not sit on an egg, not... that I was wondering if you wanted to sit on an–"

"José, I get it, okay? You can stop now." Mayzie waves an arm around languidly at her surroundings. This is a beachside pool, prime real estate. You really can't get better than this on the seaside-getaway front. "Here still looks pretty good to me. You got a problem with it?"

"No, señora. Of course not. This is my job." _Be a poolboy for a while, they said. It'll be fun, they said. You can keep an eye on Mayzie, they said. Good lord, she's not hearing me here and I've got no idea why. _ "It's just that... you have been here for a very long time. Maybe you would like a change of scenery?"

The red bird's lids lower behind her sunglasses, and she trails a hand in the pool aimlessly. "José?"

"Yes, Mayzie?"

"I'm a horribly lazy and irresponsible woman, aren't I?"

José is not at all sure how to answer that, and extremely relieved when Mayzie picks up the rather awkwardly dropped silence. "Hah! I'm just kidding, Josie."

"Ah. Ha."

"Ha."

The silence descends again. José stands by the poolside, arms crossed. At this point, Mayzie's uncomfortable self-revalations are just annoying. They sounded promising at first, maybe the start of something new and better in her, but they never amount to anything. She's gotten too good at sublimating conscience into fancy. "I'm going to take a nap," she announces. "It's... nice and sunny out."

She closes her eyes. José is beginning to creep away when she snaps them open again and sits up. "José!"

"_Yes?_" Oh, dear. That was rather a bit too snappish. Hopefully she wouldn't notice.

"I think you're right." Mayzie's voice is softer than usual. "I'm going to get away from it all for a couple of weeks, maybe go down to New Orleans. But I'll be back, okay? For my favorite poolboy." She winks at the suddenly-smiling José, and crooks her finger. "C'mere. One for the road."

They melt into one kiss and another and more than that by the poolside – it's too easy in a bathing suit, all that skin just begs to be touched – and though the bit of José which is the Cat and which never stops just observing everything from outside says, _PDA right here on the beachfront? Noooot great, we're going to scare all the tourists away,_ the rest of José which is mostly just José thinks, _yes, it could be worse. It could definitely be worse._

...

A/N: I was going to do Horton and/or the Sour Kangaroo tonight too, but when I found myself for some reason writing Mayzie as some kind of pseudo-Mae West, I decided that for everyone's sanity it would probably be better if I just went to bed. I'm going to be on a trip for the next few days, so I may not update for a bit, but I am definitely planning on doing more characters. In fact, I would welcome suggestions on who to do next. Please let me know in a review who you want to see!


	4. I've been to Pittsburg, to Kalamazoo

_I've been to Pittsburg, to Kalamazoo (Sour Kangaroo and the Wickershams)_

"Cleveland," the Sour Kangaroo snaps, crumpling the ratty circus brochure up disgustedly and throwing it to the ground. "They went to _Cleveland._"

"See, I tell you, he's nutso," the Wickersham with the hat says. His name is Truman – not that the Kangaroo has ever bothered to find out any of the Wickershams' names – and the heat is making him crabby. "What kinda a travel itinerary is Santa Fé to Cleveland?"

They're clustered, all seven of them – the Sour Kangaroo and the Young Kangaroo and the five Wickershams – around a faded poster stuck in the window of a dinky little gas station in the extreme outskirts of New Mexico's capital, and the truckers who stop by occasionally are giving them _very_ odd looks. Pairs of kangaroos and cinquets of leather-jacket-wearing monkeys are not things one sees every day at a truck stop. So far nobody's come over and bugged them, but it's really only a matter of time.

"Maybe he doesn't get to decide where they go?" the Young Kangaroo suggests. She's sitting on the ice machine way above the cracked sidewalk, sipping at a slushie which is slowly turning a large area around her mouth blue. The others barely even give her a glance.

"Shaddup, kiddie," Washington, the leader of the gang, says, scratching at the date on the poster _–_ two weeks previously – with a grimy fingernail.

"Yeah," his second-in-command, Johnson, agrees. "How do you even know how a circus works? You ain't never even been to one, have ya?"

"Yeah," the other two members of the gang, Carter and Dave, agree.

"Nah," the Young Kangaroo agrees. "Mom, can I get another slushie after this one?"

"No, honey," the Sour Kangaroo tells her distractedly. She's digging through her pouch for the tattered world map which they've toted from Nool to New York to Nebraska to Nepal and back again, and having trouble finding it among all the candy wrappers and cup lids which have accumulated in there since the Young Kangaroo discovered junk food. "You've had enough sugar for the day."

"Come on, kiddo." Truman grabs the Young Kangaroo under the arms and lifts her down off the ice machine. "I'll buy you something, you just gotta give me half. Anything to get outta this sun for five minutes."

"Hey! You– I told her no, didn't you hear me?" the Sour Kangaroo screeches, her head snapping up from the middle of the partially unfolded map. "And _you_ shouldn't be eating that artificial dreck either!"

Truman shrugs. "Deal widdit, Sour. You're the one who dragged us all the way out here. Hey, guys, hold the cycles for us, will you? C'mon, Roo." He holds the door open for her, and they step into the blessed air conditioning of the convenience store. The Jungle of Nool was _never_ this sweltering.

The Young Kangaroo spots the potato chips and makes a beeline toward them, already in bargaining mode. "Can we get Ruffles?"

The Wickersham grins. "Sure, why not." He hoists the kangaroo onto his shoulders so she can reach the top shelf – he himself is not a very tall monkey.

"Hey, Roo," the monkey asks the Young Kangaroo as she teeters to reach the bag of chips, "you know your mom is a total nutso, right? Complete control freak. I mean, seriously, the elephant is _gone._ Kaput. No longer on the agenda list. We were just having a little fun, but her? She's gotta learn to let go, dude. She just can't stand to think somebody beat her. So here we are chasin' the elephant who's chasin' the clover all over America. She ever do stuff like that with you?"

"Well, yeah–" The Young Kangaroo squeaks as she nearly overbalances. Truman grabs her legs in a moment of panic and, when they've regained their equilibrium, lowers to the floor. "I mean, she brought me along with you guys too."

Truman eyes her, about three feet off the linoleum floor and hugging a bag of Rrridged Rrruffles nearly as big as herself, the picture of contentment. "Doesn't look to me like you mind that much."

"Why would I?" the Young Kangaroo says, beginning the long, awkward walk toward the checkout counter with the bag banging against her legs at every step. "I always wanted to see outside the jungle. And eat potato chips."

...

A/N: I feel like I can't really write the Wickershams... oh well.

I think the Young Kangaroo is adorable (when she's played by a little girl instead of a puppet, that is). She reminds me of my own sister a bit. O.o

Also, I know that originally the Wickershams are written for three parts, but I just feel like they work better as a gang than a trio. So yeah.


End file.
